


a day for the hunter, a day for the prey

by MissSpookyEyes



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: A Bearskin Rug Will Never Be the Same Again Though, Alternate Universe - Regency, Anal Fingering, Cunnilingus, Enthusiastic Consent, Established Relationship, F/M, Fellatio, Femdom, Inappropriate Use of Silk Handkerchiefs, Library Sex, No Sevres Teacups Were Harmed in the Making of this Fic, Orgasm Denial, Pegging, Regency, Regency Femdom Week, Rimjobs, SWTOR AU, Soft Femdom, handjobs, very much PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:21:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27147943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissSpookyEyes/pseuds/MissSpookyEyes
Summary: What is a lady of quality to do, when her husband comes home from the hunt in the devil's own temper?Does she seek to coax him out of the sullens with sweet kisses and soft words - or find quite another way for her lord and master to vent his energies?(Regency!AU PWP for Regency Femdom Week, featuring my SWTOR Imperial Agent OC Devinahl and Arcann, former emperor of Zakuul)
Relationships: Arcann/Female Imperial Agent | Cipher Nine
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16
Collections: Regency Femdom Week 2020





	a day for the hunter, a day for the prey

**Author's Note:**

> This is a PWP one-shot featuring the Regency incarnations of my SWTOR Agent/Cipher Nine Devinahl and Arcann of KOTFEET, about whom I have written before. 
> 
> I absolutely could not let Regency Femdom Week go by without writing something about my favourite dom/sub combination. But hopefully this will also feature as a bit of a trailer for the longer and possibly even filthier work I aim to write about Miss Devinahl Charing and Viscount Tirall and their ... most unusual courtship.

The library at Spire did not belong to the oldest part of the house, nor to that part of the property considered most distinguished by the standards of the day. It was neither crenellated, Gothic and picturesque, like the east wing that was all that remained of the fifteenth-century manor which once stood on this spot, nor was it gracious and Grecian, like the frontage which now presented the infrequent visitor with the most pleasing prospect when he or she rounded the bend in the drive.

Rather, it formed part of the solid Elizabethan sprawl to the rear of Spire, and its proportions spoke of the same surety with which the Lord Tirall of the day must have surveyed his demesne. Books bound in dark green and red leather and morocco lined the walls on three sides of the room, save for where diamond-patterned casements offered views of the gardens; on the fourth wall, framed maps and oil portraits darkened with age hung above a massive, recessed stone fireplace, where a fire burned brightly to keep away the chill of a December day. An immense bearskin rug sprawled in front of the hearth, with a deep-cushioned sofa upholstered in burgundy brocade and two armchairs placed at a comfortable distance from the fire; and a vast, mahogany desk stood at the north end of the room, where the light from the two biggest windows could fall directly upon it. 

The young woman sitting at the desk seemed to neither know nor care that she was out of place in a room so clearly devoted to masculine solitude. Of rather less than middling height, dressed in a morning-gown of sprigged muslin buttoned tightly to the wrists and neck, she was almost dwarfed by the heavily-carved chair in which she sat, relic of some previous lord and master; the demure braids in which she wore her raven hair, eschewing ringlets and side-curls, were almost Quakerish. Were it not for the exquisite cut of her gown and the heavy emerald ring on her left ring finger, which caught the flame-light and kindled to green fire as she reached for a fresh sheet of paper, she could almost have been taken for a governess or hired companion, save that no such person would have had the confidence to possess themselves of the master’s desk to transact their business.

She wrote swiftly but unhurriedly, pausing often to consult the papers which lay strewn thickly over the leather surface of the desk before resuming the movements of her pen. The faint scratching of the nib, and the crackling of the fire, were the only sounds that disturbed the peace that lay thick as velvet over the library - until, that is, there was a low rumble of distant thunder, and a sudden spatter of raindrops against the leaded panes.

The lady lifted her head, and sat as if listening for more thunder. But no frown wrinkled her forehead, nor did her countenance change in any way. An intelligent observer might have speculated that here was a person who had schooled herself so thoroughly not to betray what she was thinking or feeling that she remained impassive even when alone.

She lowered her gaze and went on writing, filling sheet after sheet of paper headed to different correspondents, paying no discernible heed to the occasional low rolls of thunder nor the sound of the raindrops now being steadily driven against the windows. But when a new sound disturbed the silence of the library, she lifted her head again with a readiness that strongly suggested that she had been listening out for it even while she appeared to be thoroughly absorbed in her work.

The sound in question appeared to be footsteps, ringing footsteps against flagstones, but they had been so successfully muffled by the thick green baize which covered the inside of the library door that almost as soon as they had become audible, the door itself was flung open and the owner of the footsteps strode into the room.

If the woman, despite her self-possession, seemed ill-suited to her surroundings, the man who stormed into the library was precisely the sort of person one expected to find in it. The only discordant note in his appearance was the black lustring mask of unusual design which covered almost the entire left side of his face; otherwise, he was the picture of the Corinthian wintering at his country seat. His reddish hair was cut close to his head in a Bedford Crop, and the side of his face exposed by the mask revealed his countenance to be a handsome one, distinguished by a strong jaw and striking blue eyes beneath frowning eyebrows. His coat and breeches, clearly cut by the hand of a master, displayed to advantage the broad shoulders, narrow waist and powerful thighs of the born athlete. And if the severe black cut-away coat he wore, along with the fawn breeches and high riding boots, proclaimed beyond doubt his recent occupation, the liberal splashes of mud which adorned all three left little room for uncertainty as to the source of his ill-temper.

He did not pause nor look around after his unceremonious entry into the library had flung the door wide, but stalked across the floor heedless of the damage his boots, or rather the mud that thickly coated them, was doing to the worn but still handsome antique Aubusson carpet. 

In his wake bobbed a young man whose own more modestly-cut attire proclaimed him a valet, even if his tender years betrayed the newness of the position, clearly well aware that his duties behooved him to relieve his master of his riding boots and coat and proffer the dressing-gown he carried reverently over one arm, yet just as plainly agonizingly conscious of the rebuke he was likely to merit should he attempt to remind the master himself of this.

His eyes, casting around for help, met those of the woman still sat at the desk, and he blushed scarlet even as he directed a look of piteous entreaty at her. 

She laid down her pen, and enquired politely: ‘Home from the hunt, my lord?’

Arcann, Viscount Tirall, gave a slight start and turned away from the sideboard, where he had been reaching for the decanter which always stood ready next to the tray of crystal glasses. ‘Devinahl! Forgive me, I did not expect to find you here.’

The woman who had once been known to the Polite World as Devinahl Charing, and for the past ten months rather better known as Lady Tirall, began composedly to tidy her papers into neat piles. ‘The volume of correspondence with which I had to reckon compelled me to seek out the most commodious desk in the house.’ 

‘If I am disturbing you at your task -’

‘It will wait until tomorrow.’ She waited herself until he looked at her, then flicked her eyes briefly towards the hovering valet.

Arcann’s colour was already high, from the cold outside air which he had so recently quitted and from temper, but the flush deepened on his cheeks at her reminder. He poured himself a generous measure of port, tossed half of it off in a single swallow, then flung himself into one of the armchairs which stood at angles to the fire, beckoning brusquely to the valet.

The young man scurried forwards, pausing only to lay the dressing gown carefully upon the sofa and the slippers gently at its feet, before kneeling with the jack to relieve the viscount of his boots. That done, he glanced tentatively towards the dressing gown, but was deterred by a scorching look from under scowling brows and beat a hasty retreat, clutching the mud-splattered riding boots.

‘Inform Mr Indozal that we will take tea in here,’ Devinahl ordered calmly as he left, receiving a flustered half-bow of acknowledgement as the young valet backed towards the library door. 

She waited until she had finished tidying away all her papers into the drawer of Arcann’s desk reserved for her correspondence and locked it securely with the small key that hung always at her belt before she rose and walked around the desk towards the fireplace.

Arcann was sitting sunk deep into the cushions where he had first flung himself, heedless of his mud-spattered coat and breeches, his legs stretched out in front of him. He did not look up when she perched herself on the arm of the sofa across from him, staring broodily into the depths of the fireplace, but after a minute he said, as if with an effort: ‘I took a tumble.’

Devinahl was itching to ask if he had hurt himself, but controlled herself and asked instead: ‘Where?’

‘Down by the Wissenden, in the pasture with the willows.’ Devinahl knew the spot; it was near the boundaries of Arcann’s - their - land. She also knew the treacherous rocks that dotted the banks there, and willed herself not to shiver as Arcann went on, moodily, ‘Riding like a greenhorn.’ Again she waited, and after a minute, he muttered, half-unwillingly, ‘Damn near lamed Dragon.’

Arcann’s favourite destrier, and the prize of the Tirall stables. ‘Is Dragon hurt badly?’

‘Badly enough.’ Arcann seemed to hunch into himself, his glass of port grasped, unheeded, in one hand as he stared into the fire.

‘Hickling will know what to do,’ she said reassuringly, naming the groomsman who had been head of Arcann’s stables since his boyhood.

She had intended the words to be comforting, but he flinched as if he had been struck.

Time to change tack. ‘So tell me, my lord,’ Devinahl began, rising from her perch on the edge of the sofa and smoothing down her skirts, ‘how does a good lady wife behave when her lord comes home from the hunt in the devil’s own temper?’

He quirked an unwilling eyebrow. ‘How should I know? My experience of the married state is no longer than yours, Lady Tirall.’

‘But you are so much more well versed in the observances than I,’ she insisted, keeping her tone light. ‘Does she send for footbaths and mustard plasters, to drive the chill from his bones? Does she scold him for tracking mud upon her best carpets? Or does she seek to coax him out of his sullens, with sweet words and soft kisses?’

Arcann sighed, but he looked away from the fire and up at her face for the first time. ‘If she is cursed with a husband like yours, she would do better to flay him with her tongue.’

‘Perhaps later.’

She had deliberately sauced the words with just a little provocation, and she got her reward in the low rumble of laughter they surprised from Arcann’s chest. ‘Devil.’ He held out his hand to her, and she took it, allowing him to pull her into his lap. ‘You must lament your luck, to be saddled with such a Friday-faced fellow as I am.’

Devinahl made herself comfortable within the circle of his arms. ‘Luck had nothing to do with it.’

‘Not yours, anyway,’ he said with a darkling look. 

She said nothing, but settled herself more comfortably, curling up against his chest where she could feel the warmth of his body through his thick coat. They sat like that for a few minutes in silence, listening to the sounds of the fire and the rain being driven against the windowpanes. She fancied she could feel the tension slowly beginning to drain away from the body that supported hers, and she was not entirely surprised when Arcann said, abruptly, ‘It was the damned thunder.’

‘I thought it might have been.’

‘Startled Dragon. Startled  _ me _ .’ His mouth twisted in self-contempt; she had never yet brought him to acknowledge his understandable revulsion for thunder, recalling as it did the accident in which his twin had died, as anything other than a weakness. ‘Let him put his foot in a rabbit-hole and near brought down Pakenham and the Squire’s stripling with us.’

She waited, saying nothing, and eventually he sighed as if admitting defeat and said, ‘You’re right, that’s not all. If it were - ! We went down, and through the tangle of hooves I saw - I thought I saw - the lad fall. It was as if I saw -’ He sucked in a sharp breath through gritted teeth, and she laid her hand comfortingly upon his chest; he grasped it roughly, and went on. ‘When I rolled to my feet and saw that he had not fallen, merely been half-flung from the saddle, it was as if I lost my senses. I should have been relieved that he was safe, and yet suddenly I found myself as full of rage as if the whole affair had been his fault.’

‘You lost your temper.’

‘Devinahl, I raved! Standing there in the rain and the welter of mud, that damned thunder overhead - I said all manner of unpardonable things. I don’t know  _ what _ I said. Cursed him for a crammer and a skirter, said he was no more fit to go than a parson’s whelp … He simply stood there and took it; I suppose he was too taken aback to defend himself. Had Pakenham not bade me attend to Dragon, I might even have struck him.’

‘I don’t believe you would have,’ she said quietly.

‘You were not there.’ He stared moodily into the fire. ‘I even let loose at Hickling, when I had brought Dragon limping home. Cursed him for an old fool, damned him for a cow-handed whipster - Hickling, who taught me to ride, who stood between me and my own father in his rages once, or tried to, anyhow.’ Arcann’s face darkened further at the thought of it. ‘It was the look on his face that brought me back to my senses. I tried to apologise, but he simply led Dragon away with such affronted dignity - you know his way -’

‘He will forgive.’

‘But he will not forget. Nor will I, the way that he looked at me as if - as if I -’

‘No,’ she said sharply, and her tone was enough to recall his gaze from the fire to her face. ‘You are not your father. I admit I never knew the Comte, but I know he would not care if he wounded the pride of a faithful retainer or caused a stripling to take a tumble in the mud - much less feel such remorse for his intemperance. You are not him.’

‘You have never seen me at my worst.’

‘No?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Our somewhat unconventional courtship would surely grant me leave to differ.’

‘A fair point,’ he admitted, ruefully.

She pressed her advantage. ‘You have, at times, irritated, even infuriated me; you may have exasperated me at times beyond what flesh can bear; but you have never frightened me. Nor have I held you in the contempt you seem to feel you merit.’

‘You once called me the worthless, puffed-up offshoot of a rotten house and told me all my riches would not tempt you to tolerate my touch,’ he objected.

‘And I was unafraid to say it to your face.’ A smile tugged at the corner of his reluctant lips, and she shifted in his arms, slipping her hand from his hold and reaching up to unfasten the mask, still sodden from the rain, which he usually discarded upon returning to the house. ‘Come, Arcann, enough self-recrimination. You lost your temper, and you will make amends. Hickling knows your heart better even than I, and as for the Squire’s boy, we shall think of some scheme to salve the stripling’s wounded pride and have him thinking of you once more as the best of good fellows.’ She tugged the last knot loose, pulled the mask aside, and softly kissed the scarred cheek beneath it. 

He took her hand again, holding it against his chest. ‘And will you be as ready to forgive, my dear devil, should I turn my uncontrolled temper on you one day?’

‘You do control it; and if you don’t, I shall simply poison your tea and be off to Brazil with a bandbox stuffed with the Tirall diamonds before your corpse has gone cold.’

He burst out laughing. ‘A bargain fairly struck.’

‘And now, will you kindly consent to tend to your attire before you wreak yet more ravages on the upholstery?’ She went to slide off his lap, but the tightening of his arm detained her. 

‘I believe you made mention of driving the chill from my bones?’

‘A cup of beef-broth and a mustard-plaster would do that quite effectively.’

He shook his head. ‘By the time you returned from the kitchens, the chill would have settled on my lungs and the decline would be irreversible.’

‘Well, we can’t have that.’ She settled back against him, sliding one hand around the back of his neck, and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek near the corner of his mouth, letting her lips linger on the scarred skin. ‘Better?’

‘Alas, I fear my extremities are still frost-bitten.’

Devinahl rolled her eyes and shifted position slightly, reaching up with her free hand to tilt Arcann’s face down to hers for a long, slow kiss. ‘How are your extremities now?’ she murmured, knowing he would feel her breath upon his lips.

‘There is a certain tingling warmth,’ he admitted, a lurking smile in his eyes. 

She answered his with her own as she shifted on his lap, turning so that she could wind both arms around his neck and pull him close as she once more touched his lips with her own. This time, it was a proper kiss and he answered hers with interest, tightening his arms around her waist to pull her so close it was almost painful.

Devinahl stroked his face softly as they kissed, letting her hand trail down to his throat to rest against his pulse, relishing its pounding against her thumb as she did the soft sound he made as their lips parted. ‘And now?’

‘Now I think I am burning up with fever. You will be a widow before the year is out.’

She laughed, pleased that he was himself again, and once more went to rise from his lap, but once more he pulled her back. ‘Arcann -’

He kissed her again, with an urgency that stifled her protest and threatened to steal her breath. His fingers intertwined with hers, pulling both her hands down towards each arm of the chair, and in that moment she understood his mute plea. She twisted free of his light grip, slid her fingers around his wrists and pressed them both down against the arms of the chairs, keeping them pinioned. Arcann broke their kiss, flinging his head back hard against the headrest, his eyes bright and his chest heaving, and she knew she had guessed correctly.

‘Well now, husband,’ she said softly. ‘Have you not been punished enough today?’

He shifted underneath her, not as if he was trying to throw her off - he could have done that easily enough, if he wanted - but like a restive horse, unable to stay still. ‘Devinahl -’

‘Say it.’ She softened the words, but she could not let him off the hook, not now; she had to be sure. ‘You must say it.’

He had dropped his eyes, and now he shifted underneath her again, as if unable to reconcile the contradictory impulses inside him. She waited, silently refusing to help him, and eventually he met her gaze again, desire and shame both written on his scarred face as he blurted out: ‘Please.’

‘Please what?’ She lifted one of his unresisting hands to her lips, softly kissing each knuckle. ‘Please punish you? Please use you? Please play with you, hurt you, humiliate you, here and now, in this room?’

His fingers tightened convulsively on hers. ‘Yes. All of it. Anything.’ Then he said, for the second time, as if the word was being dragged out of him: ‘Please.’

Devinahl hesitated for a moment, feeling the tug and stir of contradictory impulses herself. This was not the way in which their more ... specialised encounters usually began; since the beginning of their unusual courtship, when she had resolved to awaken the desires she sensed beneath the Viscount’s facade, she had always been the one to take the first step in their intricate dances. Even when she had been forced to recognise that she had tumbled into something like love with Arcann Tirall, she had maintained the role of instigator, planning and preparing with the same delicate care a great political hostess might take over an embassy ball. 

This she had not planned for, had not foreseen; and there was a great deal of difference between teasing Arcann until he broke down and begged, and having him, of his own volition, make a frank avowal of his need. He had never  _ asked _ , and hearing him do so now tugged at her with a sharp, unidentifiable pang, half-pleasure, half-pain. She did not like to be unsure of her ground.

But then, Arcann was no longer her quarry; he was her husband. If she did not respond to him now, he might never again look at her as he was doing now, with his need shining nakedly in his eyes. And that was not to be borne.

‘If it comes to that, I’m not certain there will be time for  _ all _ of it,’ she teased, nipping gently at a fingertip. ‘But I’m certain I can provide some satisfaction, my lord.’ She lowered his hand to the armrest again, then deliberately pressed down on both wrists once more for leverage as she once again shifted her position. Arcann drew a long, quivering breath, although whether that was because of the pressure pinning his wrists to the chair or because of the thigh that now rested against his groin was difficult to say. Her shift in position had brought her lips close to his ear; she took full advantage of that to murmur into it, ‘Since you asked so nicely.’

Arcann exhaled almost steadily, with just the slightest hitch as she flexed the muscles of the thigh that rested against him. ‘I have the utmost confidence in you, my lady.’

She gave him a leisurely kiss behind the ear, twining one arm around behind his neck while the other hand climbed slowly up his body. ‘Your faith is touching, but still, there are obstacles.’ He had unbuttoned his hunting coat when he first came in; she pushed it open, exposing his white linen shirt. ‘The servants will be bringing in the tea-tray soon -’

‘Bugger the servants,’ Arcann muttered as her palm began to sweep across his chest in long, unhurried caresses. ‘And the tea-tray too.’

‘But what would your ancestors think?’ 

He barely cast a glance at the oil paintings hanging over the fireplace. ‘Should their portraits awaken and they see us, they would feel nothing but envy for me, my delicious devil.’

‘Prettily said, my lord.’ Devinahl flexed her thigh again, her thumb now busily tracing slow circles around Arcann’s left nipple through his shirt. ‘But I believe you have neglected the proper mode of address.’ 

Her teeth fastened on Arcann’s earlobe, hard enough to make him flinch. ‘F-forgive me, mistress.’

‘That’s better.’ It was not a term a member of the ton would ever use to address a lady of quality; there was a raffishness to it which she knew flicked him on the raw. She let her hand drop lower, smoothing the shirt where it covered the muscles of his stomach, hardened from riding. ‘Take care, my lord - although I’ll grant you that your eagerness to place yourself so unreservedly in my hands earns you a modicum of leniency. The question remains: What to do with such a windfall?’

He was getting hard already, and it was not difficult to begin to trace the outline of his shaft through his breeches as her thigh flexed rhythmically against him. ‘There’s always the stables, I suppose,’ she mused, interspersing her words with dainty, gossamer-soft kisses along his jawline. ‘You recall, I’m certain, how I took you out there before - and took you out there before?’ She laughed, in the light, careless way she might at a moderately-amusing sally directed at her across the drawing-room. ‘Tied you down across the mounting-block, whipped your back and fucked you raw? That certainly whiled away a dull afternoon, did it not, my lord? Especially when I told you I was going to leave you there after I’d finished with you, leave you there for the stable boys, and you spilled your seed right then and there in my hand.’

She was stroking him now through his breeches, the warm weight of her thigh rubbing him from below, and the rain took that moment to splatter wetly across the window panes. ‘But then, inclement weather can ruin the most delightful al fresco entertainment. Perhaps we should explore the possibilities afforded by this room, since I don’t think you are going to be in a fit state to leave it for some time.’ Her free hand toyed idly with his ear as she looked around the library. ‘There is that desk, of course - here since your great-grandfather’s time, I think I’ve heard you say? I’ve often thought how charming a picture you would make bent over it, your fingernails clawing at the leather. Perhaps I could have one of the servants fetch the riding crop you no doubt flung away in your fit of temper. I could use it first to redden your shapely behind, then have you hold it in your mouth while I finger you until you scream - and then of course I’d have to punish you again for dropping it. We could easily be here until dawn, my lord.’

He was fully hard now, straining against his breeches beneath her careless hand, and as she turned back to look at him, his eyes were bright in flushed cheeks. ‘So many delightful possibilities. So many treats I’m not sure you deserve.’ She pulled her hand away from his groin, ignoring his moan of protest, and patted his cheek. ‘Tell me, my lord and master, what do you think you deserve?’

He licked his lips, but replied, his deep voice rendered even lower by lust, ‘Whatever you deem fit, my mistress.’

‘Now that answer earns you a reward. Kiss me.’

Arcann needed no second bidding. In an instant, he had captured her mouth with his, thrusting his tongue hungrily into her mouth with an urgency that made his pent-up desire bruisingly clear.

Finger and thumb pinched his nipple, then twisted cruelly. Arcann broke the kiss and flung his head back with a snarl of pain.

‘Too eager,’ his mistress chided him, releasing his nipple. She raised her hand to rest lightly on his throat above his cravat, one finger extended to press against his chin, keeping his head resting back against the headrest. ‘Kiss me as I like to be kissed.’

She lowered her face to his, letting her softly-parted lips rest against his mouth in a lazy invitation. 

Arcann could not raise his head without disobeying the command implicit in that single finger pressing lightly on his chin. Adapting himself to the tortuously slow pace she set, he followed her lead, tracing the inner edge of her mouth with the tip of his tongue or letting her tease his with her own as he reclined with parted lips. She could feel him underneath her, trembling slightly with the effort of keeping still, as he matched her long, slow, voluptuous kisses with his own. 

Her hand dropped down to stroke at him again, and he moaned into her mouth, but did not abandon their teasing kissing - until the heel of her hand rubbed with unerring accuracy at where the head of his cock would be, and he arched up off the chair, unable to resist the temptation to vent his desire in a deeper kiss. 

Her teeth fastened on his lip, hard enough to make him yelp, and the warm weight of her body slid from his. 

Devinahl shook her head, smoothing down her skirts as she stood on the hearthrug. ‘Cannot you control yourself, my lord?’

Arcann touched his lip; his fingertips came away bloody. He smiled up at her. ‘I thought I was relieved of that responsibility at such moments, my love.’

She did not return his smile. ‘I told you earlier that I believed you could exercise self-control. Perhaps you are overdue for a lesson in that particular art.’

He touched his bleeding lip again. ‘I relish instruction at your hand, mistress.’

‘Such ready acquiescence.’ She stepped closer, cupped his chin in one hand. ‘Perhaps you will regret it when I tell you how I intend to deliver this lesson. There will be no whips. No crops. No restraints save my orders. No pain. Well …’ She swiped her thumb across his lower lip, deliberately pressing for a moment on the bitten flesh. ‘Perhaps a very little.’

Her thumb travelled back along his lips, nudged; obediently he parted them, letting it slide in. Her hand flattened against his cheek as she tugged sharply downwards against his teeth, making him battle to keep his mouth in a tight, sucking seal around her thumb. ‘I won’t roughly fuck your release out of you this time, my lord; you won’t get to writhe and howl and rub your wrists raw on your bonds. You will gentle yourself to my touch -‘ She pulled her thumb out of his mouth, wiped it dismissively against his cheek. ‘Or it will be withdrawn. Do you understand?’

She dug her fingers into his close-cropped hair, pulled his head back to look up at her; the countenance thus exposed to her gaze was flushed, the look in the blue eyes almost feral, but he answered, ‘I understand, mistress.’

Devinahl touched one fingertip lightly to the end of his nose. ‘Then I suggest you disrobe, my lord, while I give some instruction to the servants.’

There was a small silver bell that stood on the side-table at one end of the sofa, but she did not ring it. Instead she waited for him to shrug off his heavy hunting-coat, and folded it over her arm as she crossed to the door and opened it. Holding the door half-closed behind her, she handed over the coat to one of the footmen who stood outside, and issued several commands to both men in a low voice.

When she came back into the library, once more closing the door behind him, Arcann was pulling his shirt over his head, and the sight momentarily interrupted the schemes proliferating in her head. It was not often that she got to see him like this, lit so magnificently by the fireplace behind him, the flickering shadows caressing his torso. To most, no matter how much they admired his broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted form, the burn scars that sprawled thickly over Arcann’s left shoulder, wreathed his arm and crawled down his side would disqualify the viscount from being considered beautiful. But to Devinahl, who knew precisely how many times an unblemished skin could be used for currency and still retain its sheen - 

No, this was not a matter of lofty sentiment, and noble ideals could not explain why just the sight of Arcann’s naked torso made her palms tingle in anticipation of running her hands all over him, the smooth skin and the rough, until every inch cried out for her. 

She schooled her face to impassivity as he glanced across at her before peeling off his breeches, kicking them aside to stand naked in front of the fireplace.

Devinahl was almost disappointed when the knock came at the door just as Arcann had finished disrobing; no need to play for time. She crossed to the door, waited for a few moments to be safe, then opened it. 

Spire’s well-trained servants had played their parts to perfection. The tea-tray, complete with teapot, cups, spoons, sugar-bowl and tongs and a plate of Mrs Rattray’s freshly-baked macaroons, stood ready on the hall table. Next to it was a large blue-and-white patterned earthenware bowl filled with water, a washcloth draped carefully on the rim. And next to that was the small lacquer-work chest usually kept in her boudoir which was one of the few things that she had actually brought to Spire when she came there as a bride. Her dowry, in a manner of speaking.

There were no footmen or other servants in sight; that, too, had been part of her instructions. She lifted the heavy tea-tray, grimacing slightly at the weight, and carried it back inside the library. ‘Take this,’ she ordered, ‘and put it on the table.’

Arcann had instinctively come across the room, naked as he was, to relieve her of the burden, but he could not conceal the expression of aristocratic distaste that flickered across his face as he did so. 

Devinahl laughed at him, speaking softly enough that she knew her words would not carry, although there should be no servants in the rooms anywhere near them by now: ‘Your pride isn’t offended by being taken up the arse by your wife, my lord, but you baulk at doing a servant’s work?’

He had the grace to blush, but retorted: ‘Am I to learn to curtsey next?’

She patted his cheek. ‘A wiser man would be careful not to place ideas in my head. By the fire, please.’

As Arcann carried the tea-tray over to the fire, Devinahl fetched the small chest from the hall table, then went back for the water-bowl, placing both on the sewing table that stood at the opposite end of the sofa from the table on which the tea tray now resided.

Lastly, she settled herself on the sofa, sweeping her skirts out around her in a pretty, practiced gesture, and smiled sweetly up at Arcann. ‘On your knees, my lord, if you please.’

He obeyed, his knees sinking into the thick bearskin rug.

‘And now for your lesson - but first, tea.’ Devinahl turned to the tea-tray, placed where the lady of the house could conveniently dispense refreshments without rising from the sofa. She adjusted the position of the cups, making the spoons in the saucers ring delicately against the delicate porcelain, lifted the lid of the sugar-bowl to ensure it was well filled, and picked up the plate of macaroons, inhaling the aroma of the freshly-baked biscuits. ‘Your favourite, my lord.’ She held the plate out so he too could smell them. ‘Mrs Rattray clearly believes you deserve a treat after a day spent hunting.’ She carefully selected one macaroon, put the plate back on the tea tray, and held the biscuit out to the kneeling viscount. ‘Do you believe you deserve a treat?’

‘No, mistress.’

Devinahl sighed, leaning back on the sofa. ‘It’s what I think you deserve that matters, and you know it well. Such wanton provocation.’ She took a bite of the macaroon, chewing and swallowing in a leisurely fashion before licking the crumbs from her lips and fingers. Arcann bit his lip as he watched, although that might have had more to do with the fact that the toes of one of her silk-stockinged feet were stroking idly at the inside of his thigh. ‘Really, my lord, I hope for your sake that you’re not going to be a stubborn pupil.’

Devinahl laid the rest of the macaroon aside, then reached for the Sèvres teapot and carefully poured a generous measure of tea into the nearest cup. Steam immediately issued from the surface in fragrant spirals. Daintily, she picked up the sugar tongs, and dropped a single lump into her cup before stirring it thoroughly and laying her spoon back in the saucer. 

Then she raised the cup to her lips - and frowned. ‘Still too hot to drink, however.’ 

She pointed with one foot to the end of the hearthrug nearest the desk. ‘Hands there, please.’

Arcann looked slightly puzzled, but obeyed, shuffling in a quarter-turn and leaning forward to place his palms flat on the rug, so that he was now on hands and knees, parallel to the sofa.

‘Knees a little wider, my lord.’

He obeyed, edging his knees apart until his thighs were fully parted..

Devinahl circled finger and thumb around the rim of the teacup and lifted it from the saucer, leaning forward to place it carefully in the centre of Arcann’s back.

He flinched in surprise as the hot porcelain touched his skin, and she steadied the cup. ‘Have a care, my lord. The tea will not burn you, but it will be unpleasantly hot. And I believe your grandmother brought this china all the way from the Low Countries herself.’

‘Great-grandmother, actually.’ She saw Arcann’s head move slightly, and knew he was resisting the temptation to twist round to look at the cup that she had just carefully re-settled on his back. She had placed it in such a position that he could not relax his stomach muscles fully and arch his back without spilling the tea or upsetting the cup altogether; equally, if he were to drop his head and shoulders, or even bend his elbows to lower his forehead to the rug, the results would be similarly disastrous.

‘I stand corrected. As you will, should you allow the tea to spill.’

‘A test, my mistress?’

‘A lesson in control.’ Devinahl rose from the sofa, smoothing down her skirts, and walked slowly around her viscount, enjoying the picture he presented. She dropped to one knee before him, encouraged him to look up at her with a finger beneath his chin. ‘I need hardly say that if the cup is unsettled and the tea spilled before I declare it permissible, there will be consequences. Ones you will not enjoy.’ She leaned in to kiss him softly. ‘Keep the teacup steady, my lord. No matter what.’

Blue eyes looked up at her, questioning. ‘No matter … what?’

‘No matter what I do to you.’ As she rose and walked round behind him, she heard Arcann groan quietly.

Devinahl could not help but pause to enjoy, once more, the picture presented by her husband, Viscount Tirall. The lord and master of Spire, scion of the ancient de Vitiate line, noted Corinthian, despair of the matchmaking mamas of the ton and one of the wealthiest men in England ... 

Naked as the day he was born, on his hands and knees on the bearskin rug of his ancestral library, and doing service as her tea-table.

She knew her lord’s muscular strength, his endurance born of long days in the saddle, on the hunting-field, boxing at Jackson’s Saloon, fencing with the masters; although the position he would be required to hold in order to keep the tea-cup she had balanced on his back from spilling or falling entirely would tax his energies somewhat, she had no doubt that he could hold it for a considerable length of time, given ideal circumstances.

Devinahl intended to make his circumstances considerably less than ideal.

She knelt on the hearthrug behind him, arranging her skirts neatly around her, and contemplated the view from this angle. It might not be considered the most flattering perspective on her husband, but for Lady Tirall, it held a certain charm. So much so, in fact, that she could not resist trailing a single finger up and down the inside of his thigh.

He startled at the unexpected touch, and she laughed. ‘Careful, my lord.’

‘Devil,’ he grumbled.

Charming as she found his particular epithet for her to be, it was not what she wanted to hear from him right now. ‘Ah?’

‘Mistress,’ he corrected himself quickly.

‘Better.’ She had selected the mode in which he would address her during such occasions with particular care;  _ mistress _ \- not lady, madam, ma’am or miss - was not a term a gentleman would ever use with a woman who was his equal in rank and consequence. Arcann had never behaved to her as if she was anything but his equal, and she knew it heightened the exquisite torment he gained from these encounters to force him to acknowledge that she was not, even while he humbled himself to her. And she could not but relish it herself. Viscount Tirall, in the eyes of the Polite World, had married below himself (quite how far below himself only she and Arcann and one or two others would ever know); and yet in their private moments, it was she - last daughter of a disgraced family, once courtesan, always spy - who held the whip hand over him with an assurance the completeness of which the society matrons who treated her with studied insolence could only dream.

They thought she had married him for his position. They were not, she thought as she looked at him kneeling,  _ wholly _ wrong.

Time to begin. The bowl of warm water she had commanded stood nearby; she reached for it, settled it on the hearthrug between Arcann’s spread knees, dipped the washcloth into it, wrung it out. 

Then Devinahl touched the cloth to the inside of Arcann’s thigh down by his knee, beginning to work her way up in tiny circles. She took her time with it, moving the washcloth in tight overlapping spirals, pausing frequently to rinse it out.

Arcann’s thighs had been tensed at first, but as she continued the slow massage, she felt the muscles which had been tightly corded begin to relax. ‘How does it feel, my lord?’ she asked conversationally.

‘Like a damned unusual punishment.’

Devinahl smiled, working her way methodically upwards. ‘I told you there would be no punishment. This is a lesson in control.’

A heavy sigh with a quiver at its heart was his response - one that quickly became an indrawn breath of anticipation as the washcloth neared the apex of his thighs. Devinahl inched her fingertips, covered in the soft flannel, higher until her knuckles first lightly grazed his balls - then lowered her hand to the basin, rinsing out the washcloth thoroughly before beginning at the bottom of his other thigh.

She heard Arcann hiss quietly, clearly fearing to give greater vent to his frustration, and smiled to herself. ‘Don’t forget the teacup, my lord.’

An inarticulate growl answered her as she repeated the process on his right thigh, methodically working the washcloth in small circles, feeling the skin warm and the muscles soften almost reluctantly as she smoothed away the tension. The fire was crackling and the rain beat against the windowpanes, but she could still hear Arcann’s breathing, slow and deep with a ragged edge to it as if lulled into warmth and somnolence but fretted by the desire that kept one hand always on the reins. As the washcloth once again approached the top of his thighs, she heard his breathing grow more rapid and saw him tense as if bracing himself against the inevitable disappointment - then relax as she once more took the washcloth away.

Only to jolt and curse as Devinahl flicked a finger against his balls, not hard, but hard enough to have him battling to maintain his posture as the tea in the cup slopped dangerously against the sides.

She watched as the tea came perilously close to spilling, only to slow and settle as he managed to school himself to immobility again. 

Devinahl tsk’ed under her breath. ‘Careful, my lord. If you upset the teacup, the lesson will be over, and there are too many things I want to do to you yet.’

She wet the washcloth again and brought it to the juncture of his thighs, sowing butterfly kisses over one half of his rear as she delicately spread him just enough to allow her washcloth-covered thumb to inveigle itself between his cheeks and begin working upwards.

The breath that Arcann let out this time concealed the shudder at its core less than perfectly. ‘Dev -  _ mistress - _ ’

‘Yes?’ She listened for the hitch in his breathing as her thumb guided the washcloth over the tight pucker of his arsehole, and was not disappointed. 'Was there something?' 

'Sometimes I think you truly will be the death of me,' he said, his tone tight with anticipation and sensation as she continued to wash him gently, her thumb nudging just a fraction deeper each time it glided over the ring of muscle. 

'If I am, my lord, it will be a death that kings might envy.' 

Devinahl methodically worked at him with the washcloth, ignoring the slight sounds he was now making, until she was satisfied. She put the washcloth back in the basin, and caressed his rear, using her thumbs to spread him once again, admiring her handiwork. ‘I do wish you could see yourself from this perspective, my lord. I’ve barely touched you, and already your arsehole is simply begging to be fucked.’ 

She could feel the tremors and twitches that Arcann was suppressing, for fear of upsetting the teacup, coursing through the body beneath her hands as she ghosted a fingertip over the clenching rim. ‘I don’t want to drive you too fast, but I must give it something.’ 

Devinahl reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a handkerchief: Finest ivory silk, exquisite embroidery enclosing her initials; one of dozens which now reposed in her dressing-room upstairs, lovingly cared for by her dresser. She trailed it lightly over Arcann’s thighs and back, enjoying his low rumble of frustration, then pulled the centre of it tightly over her index finger. Dipping her finger into the basin to moisten it, she very slowly and carefully worked her finger perhaps an inch inside him - and then equally carefully withdrew it, leaving the handkerchief behind.

‘Hold,’ she warned him as she rose from her knees, taking a step backwards to better admire the effect of the fine white silk handkerchief, dangling down like a false tail, her monogrammed initials clearly visible. ‘Can you feel it, my lord? Just the faintest whisper, the most miniscule intimation of what I’ll do to you? Is it worse than having nothing in your arse? Does it make you hungrier?’

Devinahl could hear the breathing, stentorian now, of the kneeling viscount on the heathrug as she circled him to reach the sewing-table on which she had placed the chest retrieved from her bedroom. Keeping her body between Arcann and the chest, so that he could not see what she took from it, she nevertheless heard his breathing quicken as she unlocked it with one of the small keys that hung from her belt. 

She hid one of the objects she removed from the chest in the folds of her skirt as she turned back, but allowed Arcann to catch a glimpse of the vial of oil she slid into her pocket as she circled him again. She paused to dip her little finger in the teacup, and touched it to her lips like a lady might perfume to the inside of her wrist. ‘Hmmm. Needs refreshing.’ She reached for the teapot and poured a little more into the teacup balanced on Arcann’s back.

Now the cup was three-quarters full, the surface of the liquid perhaps half an inch from the golden rim; it would not take very much of a movement on Arcann’s part for it to overbalance and spill.

Devinahl settled herself behind Arcann again, this time kneeling almost between his spread knees. ‘Now, where were we? Ah, yes.’ She unstopped the vial, poured a little oil on to her palm and rubbed her hands together to spread it around before reaching between Arcann’s thighs. ‘Control.’

Arcann moaned aloud as he felt her fingers, warm and slippery from the oil, close around his shaft. A few strokes were all it took to have him back to straining hardness, her hand twisting expertly as it slid up and down, but as soon as he began to relax into the rhythm of it, she stopped and fluttered her thumb against the underside of the head instead, or lightly circled the tip. 

She watched the muscles in his back working beneath the firelit skin, sensing his struggle not to rock back and forth, to thrust into her grasp. The way she was reaching between his legs from behind him also stirred the handkerchief dangling from his arse against his balls and the inside of his thighs, something she had not considered but was happy to take credit for if it added to his torment.

Which, judging by the sounds he was emitting from between his clenched teeth, it did. 

She gave him a final few strokes before pulling her hand away, relishing Arcann’s low growl of protest. ‘Disappointed, my lord? I thought you wanted my fingers here.’ She ran them lightly down the cleft of his arse. ‘They cannot be everywhere at once, you know.’

‘I would not venture to dictate to my mistress.’

‘An excellent answer, and one which deserves a reward.’ She tugged the handkerchief loose, dropping it into the basin and swiftly re-oiled her hand. Grasping his rear with her left hand and using her thumb to help spread him open, she eased her middle finger slowly inside him.

Arcann was not moving, exactly, but she could feel little convulsive twitches in his flesh like a stallion tormented by flies as she slowly worked her finger in and out, going a little deeper each time, until the curled backs of her other fingers rested against his arse.

Devinahl paused - then pushed just a fraction further, the pressure of her fingers dimpling his flesh.

Arcann gave a long, shuddering moan, but the teacup stayed steady.

Smiling to herself, she tilted the vial in her left hand so that a trickle of oil ran down the cleft of his arse to where her finger was buried, then slowly, remorselessly, wormed a second finger in. 

‘How does it feel, my lord?’ she asked, as she began to slowly fuck him with her fingers.

‘It - ah - feels -’ He wasn’t rocking back against her hand, not yet, but she could feel him battling with himself to contain the urge to do just that. ‘I .. I can’t talk. You talk.’

‘Oh, I’m far too busy to divert you with my usual chatter.’ She ran her free hand over his thighs, his flanks, relishing the trembling that momentarily soothed between her touch. ‘You are the one with nothing to do but stay still.’

‘I -  _ fuck _ !’ The curse exploded out of him as she reached for his cock again with her left hand this time, stilling the fingers of the right hand in his arse as soon as she began to stroke. He felt bigger and hotter and harder than ever in her hand, and he was rocking back against her fingers, just slightly, but enough to set the liquid in the teacup sloshing minutely from side to side. ‘Please, Dev - mistress - do both -’

‘Both?’ She let her left hand glide to a halt, resting on his dick, while the fingers in his arse seamlessly picked up the motion. Arcann groaned again. ‘But if I do both, I fear you won’t be able to hold position. And I do so want you to learn this lesson properly.’

‘I can - I can’t - in God’s name,  _ please _ .’ Every muscle was tensing up as he tried to battle the urge to rock back against her, to buck and roll his hips, to arch his back, something. ‘Stop - don’t stop - you’re killing me, devil.’

She watched the seemingly unconscious sway of his back from side to side, the tea running up first one side of the cup, then the other in time with the leisurely rhythm of her fingers as they twisted and thrust and withdrew inside him. ‘Which is it, my lord?’ She switched again from fucking him with her fingers to stroking his shaft, and he choked. ‘Do you want more? Or less?’ She crooked her fingers, just slightly, and Arcann’s whole body jolted; the tea lapped right up to the golden rim of the teacup but did not quite spill. ‘Are you praying to God, or to me?’

She leaned forward and licked at him, her tongue flickering and lapping between and around her fingers. 

Arcann drew a vast, shuddering breath and his cock twitched in her hand and he clenched desperately around her fingers, but he did not quite jerk violently enough to upset the teacup, not quite - 

Until, that was, she released his cock, reached back behind her with her left hand and deliberately tickled the sole of his foot.

With a choked sound, Arcann jerked forward to rid himself of her tormenting touch. His elbows finally gave way and he fell forward. 

Devinahl had anticipated this reaction and grabbed for the teacup, catching it before it had fully overbalanced and slid from Arcann’s now-sloping back. The tea, still hot but not enough to scald, spilled over her fingers and on to the viscount’s back, trickling down towards his heaving shoulders as he knelt, shuddering and gasping, forehead sinking into the bearskin, cock straining and pulsing against his belly, and arse high in the air, clenching and twitching around Devinahl’s still-buried fingers. 

‘Here endeth the lesson.’ She slowly pulled her fingers out of him, and he groaned the entire time she did so, one long drawn-out note of anguish. ‘This chapter of it, anyway,’ Devinahl added brightly, patting his rear, and Arcann’s face buried itself deeper in the bearskin rug as he groaned again.

Devinahl left Arcann unmolested - for the moment - as she washed her hands in the basin and retrieved the vial of oil she had dropped on the hearthrug. Stepping daintily around the prone, trembling figure of the viscount, she carried her teacup back to the sofa and sat, straight-backed and correct, sipping her tea and gazing into the fire.

Arcann heaved himself up from the hearthrug and groped almost blindly for her, shuffling forward until he was kneeling at her feet. His arms reached around her waist and he laid his head in her lap. She could feel the weight of him trembling against her, his sweat dampening her dress, and she stroked his head lightly as she listened to his breathing begin to soften and slow.

‘Forgive me,’ he mumbled into her lap.

She smoothed his close-cropped hair. ‘What sins have you committed, my lord?’

‘I failed. You told me to control myself, and I -’

‘- did, until offered insupportable provocation.’ He raised his head to look at her disbelievingly. ‘This was no test. You cannot fail, and you could never succeed.’ An incredulous chuckle caught in his throat as she sipped her tea, and went on. ‘I told you there would be no punishment. Only a lesson.’ She took another sip, and added: ‘And the lesson is not over yet.’

He sat back on his heels, loosening his grip around her waist, eyeing her with a curious mixture of dawning anticipation and mounting trepidation. ‘You mean -’

‘I have more to take from you yet, my lord.’ She nudged his still-straining cock with her toes, and he hissed, his hands tightening on her hips. ‘Do I not?’

‘Everything I possess.’

‘And some you did not know you had, I assure you.’ She reached out to stroke his face, and he caught at her fingertips with his mouth with an eagerness which, had she been in any doubt that Arcann still craved the release he had been denied, would have resolved the matter. She let him close his lips around one or two and suck for a moment before withdrawing her hand and pointing to the rug. ‘On your back.’

The haste with which he obeyed her made a stark contrast to the leisurely fashion in which she drank the last few sips of her tea. Finally putting the cup aside, she rose and looked down on the man lying at her feet on the hearthrug, admiring once again the sight of his naked limbs in the firelight. ‘Are you ready, my lord?’

He nodded, and his hard dick bobbed and twitched against his belly as if in agreement.

She could not own him more utterly, and yet still she longed to lay claim to every inch of him anew; now that was devilry as least as deep and dark of that which he regularly accused her of. 

Still, if she burned for him as much as he did for her, better to reign in hell, as the poet had said. 

She tugged at her collar, regretting her choice to wear her tight-buttoned French silk today. ‘I would like to disrobe at this point, but with no abigail to assist me, needs must -’

‘- as the devil drives,’ he completed the adage as she pulled her skirts up to her waist, tucking and hitching them as best she could to make them stay up as she bent to straddle him. 

This was one of their favourite positions, Arcann on his back and Devinahl astride his waist, facing his feet, where she could play with him to her heart’s content while his hands stroked her back or gripped her hips or even roamed up to her breasts, if she allowed it. Instinctively, Arcann’s hands had already wandered to her hips, and Devinahl twisted to show her displeasure. ‘Down.’ 

His arms dropped obediently back to his sides, the fingers loosely spread, tufts of bearskin poking between them.

‘Good boy.’ Devinahl reached across to the sofa and pulled the object she had earlier taken from the chest out from underneath the cushion where she had hidden it. ‘Recognise this, my lord?’ She twisted to show Arcann what she was holding; a curved rod, a slender half-moon of ivory polished smooth to the touch, unornamented save for a rounded protrusion at either end, one larger, one smaller. 

The stir of her husband’s hips underneath her told her that he definitely did remember as Devinahl tilted it this way and that, enjoying the way the firelight turned the ivory to cream. ‘We found it in that curious little shop in Constantinople - and tried its paces that very night, if I recall. I thought it might be a good tool for our lesson - although remembering the way you bucked when we tried the larger end, I believe we should content ourselves with the smaller end today.’ 

She reached for the oil again, coated the smaller end of the tool liberally, and leaned forward. ‘Spread your legs,’ she warned, and Arcann obediently parted his thighs.

It was not so very long, after all, since her fingers had been penetrating him, and by judicious degrees, she was able to work one end of the tool inside him, the remainder of the rod curving up from between his thighs where she could easily reach it. ‘Knees together.’

Arcann closed his legs, helping to keep the tool in place.

Experimentally, she pushed down on the larger end, and Arcann jerked and moaned underneath her as the smaller end inside him pressed hard against just the right spot.

Pleased with the effect she had created, Devinahl let go of the tool, leaving it held in place by its shape and the grip of his body, inside and out. 

She was sorely tempted to mount him, to ride his dick while she worked the tool, taking him from both ends as she sometimes did by having him sit on a chair with something inside him that nudged his tenderest spot whenever she sank down hard on him. It was a treatment, she knew from delicious experience, that would quickly reduce him to little more than quivering, pleading flesh and a mouth that begged, incoherently and indiscriminately, for her to stop and for her to never stop. But that was not the lesson she had promised him.

Instead, she moved backwards up his body until her spread knees were either side of his upper chest, leaning forward to take her weight on the palms that sank into the tangled softness of the rug. She heard Arcann give a low moan that was almost a growl, and knew that he was appreciating the view afforded by the skirts rucked up above her waist. His hands, seemingly of their own volition, came up to wrap around her thighs, helping to brace her, as she leaned forward once again and lightly brushed the head of his dick with her lips.

‘God in heaven, you truly are trying to kill me,’ he groaned as she kissed at his shaft as far as she could reach.

Devinahl smiled as best she could while making teasing attempts to capture him in her mouth, giving him little tastes of lips and tongue and warm wet heat. ‘We can end the lesson here and now, if you prefer.’

‘Perish the thought,’ he ground out. ‘But many more of your tricks, and you will be a widow in earnest.’

‘No tricks, my lord. You can have your satisfaction -’ She licked at the head of his dick, and he whined - ‘as long as I can have mine.’

She lowered herself so that he could reach her with his mouth, at the same time using her hand to guide his dick between her lips.

Arcann needed no second invitation. His hands pulled at her thighs as he strained upwards from the floor, tongue diving into her folds, licking and questing frantically. 

Devinahl had barely closed her lips and fist around him when she raised herself again, out of reach, releasing his cock at the same time. ‘No, no, my lord,’ she chided, idly reaching for the tool and rocking it rhythmically inside him as she spoke. ‘Control, remember? The wise hunter stalks, goes softly, slowly. The wise hunter waits.’

Arcann’s body made little abortive twitches and bucks beneath her with each movement of the tool inside him, and his voice was strained and hoarse, but he answered with an attempt at repartee: ‘My mistress is a hunter now? I don’t believe I saw you on the field today.’

‘And which one of us caught their prey?’

This time, he waited for her to lower her hips instead of straining upwards to meet them, and the touch of his tongue was light, restrained, an insinuation rather than a demand to devour. Devinahl edged her knees a little further apart to reward him, allowing him more access, while she once again wrapped her fingers around him, guiding the head of his cock between her lips. This time, they closed around him, and her tongue circled the tip as she felt the first flickerings of his at the crux of her pleasure.

She could sense him straining to get at her fully, to take her pearl into his mouth and bathe it with his tongue, but she stayed where she was, her hips lightly circling, her own mouth working on just the first inch of his dick, until he arched up from the rug with a frustrated groan -

Immediately, she raised her hips up out of reach, allowing him to slip out of her mouth at the same time, and the groan became something like a howl.

‘Patience, patience, my lord.’ She reached out once more to touch the end of the tool, watching the shivers that rose and fell in his thighs in waves as she manipulated it so that the smaller end inside him brushed - but no more - against the correct spot. 

‘I - am - trying,’ he gritted out.

‘Indeed you are. Very trying.’ She twisted the tool, just a little, and Arcann’s fingers dug into her thighs so hard it was almost painful. ‘Pleasure does not have to be pursued headlong with hue and cry. You can simply lie there - and feel -’ She trailed a row of wet, sucking kisses along his shaft, nuzzling at his heaving belly with lips and teeth. ‘Feel it gathering, as if from far off, the sensation - lie still, for as long as you can, knowing that to clutch at it, to try to hasten it, is to tarnish it -’

She had lowered her hips while she was speaking, and felt Arcann’s hot, shivering breath on her most secret skin as his tongue once again explored her. He kept himself from straining upwards, though, discipling himself to dart and fence at the core of her pleasure, and Devinahl tried her best to contain the shudder that rippled through her as she hovered herself on the tantalising brink.

‘Good, g-good, my lord,’ she murmured, fighting the temptation to plunge her hips down and grind savagely to take her own climax from her husband’s tongue. ‘Good …’

This time, she took him deeper in her mouth and began to use her tongue against his shaft in earnest while her hand worked up and down from the base. She tasted his closeness to completion on her tongue but she was close too, so close … She spread her knees just a little wider, bringing her wet core down against Arcann’s mouth in earnest, and sucked hard. Arcann arched upwards into her cunt, lapping frantically as his thighs trembled and spasmed, and at once she lifted hips and head out of contact with him. 

Her own body ached at fulfilment denied, but that empty clutch for pleasure was nothing to the note of pure satisfaction that shot through her as she looked down at the squirming, shaking, sweat-soaked body of her husband. His hands had lost their grip on her thighs, and were buried, white-knuckled, in fistfuls of bearskin; the hardened muscles of his belly heaved and fluttered as he gasped for breath, his swollen dick bobbing and twitching against them; and still he kept the powerful athlete’s thighs clenched tight together, even as shivers ran through them again and again, in obedience to her command.

She touched the end of the tool lightly, just touched it once, and a broken whine came from his throat.

‘I can’t, I can’t,’ he gasped out. ‘Please, I’m sorry, I can’t –  _ please - _ ’

Devinahl lowered her hips for one slow, hard circuit against his desperate mouth, then raised them again. ‘Can’t what, my lord?’

‘Can’t – can’t keep myself from -’ She touched the end of the tool again, and he sucked in a great, shuddering breath. ‘I cannot – keep – control -’

‘Oh, my lord, haven’t you learned your lesson yet?’ She slapped lightly at the tool, and he jumped and moaned on the rug. ‘You cannot lose what you never had.’ Another slap, making it jolt inside him. ‘I had you broken to bridle before ever I took your name.’ She slapped at the tool a third time, then wrapped her hand around the base of his dick, beginning to work it up and down. ‘And what have you to fear with my hand on your rein?’

‘Nothing.’ It was almost a shout, and it became a chant as he repeated the word in time with the strokes of her hand. ‘Nothing, nothing, nothing -’

Devinahl let her hips settle fully against his face, let her weight fall forward as she engulfed as much of him in her mouth as she could, working her hand up and down on the rest. He was licking and sucking desperately at her even as she felt him twitch and jerk in her mouth. In the end it was not his tongue that pushed her over the edge, nor the sudden hot taste of his seed, but the long-drawn-out, agonised howl he let out into her cunt that had her bucking and grinding her hips against his mouth, the sound of his surrender.

She rode out her pleasure against his tongue as his seed pulsed into her mouth, listening to his scream trail off into a moan of completion that sounded almost desolate as the stuttering waves of thrusts died down in his hips. She let him slide out of her mouth, and crawled forward, settling herself once again astride his waist. 

She heard him give a faint groan behind her, and reached a hand back without looking, letting him catch it and guide it to his lips. His kisses and sucks at her fingers were languid now, rather than demanding, and the soft sounds he made as she lightly ran the nails of her other hand over his flanks and thighs and lower belly were sleepy and satisfied.

Devinahl gave him almost a whole minute to enjoy his satiety before she reached for the tool again.

The sound Arcann made as she pressed down on it was shocked and raw and delicious, his body jolted underneath her like a startled horse. ‘Dev - what -?’

‘Oh, did you think I was satisfied, my lord?’ She took hold of the toy and began to work it inside him, wrapping her other hand around his dick; it had begun to soften, but a few strokes sufficed to have it harden once more. ‘The lesson might be finished, but I am not. Not while there’s still so much more for me to take.’

His hands gripped her thighs feebly, but his dick was swiftly returning to full hardness beneath her grasping hand. ‘No - I can’t - it’s too much -’

‘You run in my harness, I decide what’s too much.’ All teasing abandoned, she was working the tool ruthlessly, twisting and pressing down on the larger end to have the smaller end inside him knead at the tenderest spot again and again, while her other hand pumped his shaft in the same rhythm. ‘And I say there are no limits to what a greedy whore like you can take.’

He was panting again, sharp little moans coming involuntarily from his throat every time she pushed on the tool as if she was fucking them out of him. ‘I can’t - I can’t - stop - please -’

‘Do you really want me to stop?’ She stilled both hands momentarily, and his dick twitched in her grasp and he arched beneath her. ‘Truly?’

‘ _ Nnnngghh _ \- no - no - don’t stop, please, don’t,  _ please - _ ’

‘As you wish, my lord.’ He had denied the opportunity for clemency, and she was not going to offer him another. 

She fucked him hard with the tool, twisting and pumping it inside him, while her hand on his shaft matched the furious pace and his hips thrust convulsively beneath her as if trying to simultaneously escape and pursue the overwhelming sensations. He did not come quickly, not so soon after spending the first time, but she showed no mercy, working at him until the sweat broke out on her own forehead and he was running with it, his mouth spilling snatches of pleas and curses, his heels scrabbling and his fingers clawing at the bearskin as he spent his pleasure at last.

She slid the tool out of him as he collapsed limply back on the rug, his seed striping the fingers that still gently grasped his dick, and twisted to look at him for the first time since she had penetrated him with the ivory rod. 

He was flushed, his chest and throat still heaving as he panted for breath through his half-open mouth, his face wet with sweat and smeared with tears. But the blue eyes that met her as he pushed himself weakly up on his elbows were as open and steady as the sky.

She felt it then, a throb of pure tenderness that gripped her so powerfully she thought she might faint, and she had to swallow before she chided, ‘Lie back, my lord.’ 

She pushed him gently back on the hearthrug and climbed off him, bending over to kiss him softly before pulling away, ignoring his faint moan of protest, and rising. Releasing her skirts from where she had tucked them up at her waist, she swiftly fetched the decanter from the sideboard and two glasses, pausing to retrieve his dressing gown from where the valet had left it draped over the sofa, and knelt down again on the rug at her husband’s side. Gently evading the hands that sought to pull her down next to him, she pulled one arm through the sleeve of his dressing gown, wrapping the rest of the heavy silk around him as best she could, and turned to poke up the fire until the warmth washed over them both. 

He had pulled himself up to a half-sitting position, and got his other arm through the sleeve of his dressing gown, wrapping it around him as he held out his hand for the glass of port she was pouring for him.

As she offered it to him, he took it, his fingers trapping hers on the delicate glass - and paused. The surface of the dark liquid was trembling, rocking faintly from side to side; but it was not his hand that was making it shake.

Their eyes met, and Devinahl felt herself blush. She turned her head away. ‘I should tend to the fire -’

Silently, Arcann put the glass aside and reached for her, and this time she let him pull her into his arms and down onto the rug with him. He pulled a cushion off the sofa and nestled it underneath their heads, then wrapped both arms around her waist, pulling her against him so she felt the heat of his body behind her and the fire in front.

They lay like that for a while, the warmth slowly stealing inside her, until at last she asked: ‘Are you all right?’

She felt a low rumble of laughter in his chest. ‘Utterly ravaged, dear torment.’ He kissed her neck. ‘As you intended.’

Devinahl smiled, relaxing back against him and idly caressing his arm where it was wrapped around her waist. ‘And do you take the field tomorrow, my lord?’

‘Hunting?’ That surprised a laugh out of him, a real laugh, and she half-turned to look at him, curious to know the source of his mirth. ‘No,’ he said, still laughing, ‘I don’t believe I will hunt tomorrow. I think a quiet day by the fireside with my wife will provide all the excitement I require.’

She laughed too, but cocked an eyebrow up at him. ‘Should I consider that a challenge?’

‘ _ Devil _ ,’ he said, with feeling, and kissed her. 

**Author's Note:**

> Anything recognisable as SWTOR-related belongs to Bioware and Disney. 
> 
> My sincere apologies to the ghost of Georgette Heyer.
> 
> My equally sincere thanks to verbose_vespertine and SunsetOfDoom for encouragement and beta-ing.
> 
> Title comes from the song/album of the same name by Leyla McCalla


End file.
